Japan earthquake and tsunami of 2011also called Great Sendai earthquakeEarthquake or Great Tōhoku earthquakeEarthquakesevere earthquake that occurred on March 11, 2011, off the northeastern coast of Honshu, Japan, the country’s main island. It caused widespread damage on land and initiated a tsunami that devastated many coastal areas of the country, most notably in the Tōhoku region (northeastern Honshu).

The earthquake and tsunami

The magnitude-9.0 earthquake struck at 2:46 PM. (It was originally measured at The early estimate of magnitude 8.9 but was later revised upward.) The epicentre was located some 80 miles (130 km) east of the city of Sendai, Miyagi prefecture, and the focus occurred at a depth of about 15 miles (about 24 km) below the floor of the western Pacific Ocean. The earthquake—resulting from the rupture of a an approximately 186-mile- (300-km-) long stretch of the Japan Trench that separates the Eurasian Plate from the subducting Pacific Plate—was felt as far away as Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia; Kao-hsiung, Taiwan; and Beijing, China. (Some geologists argue that this portion of the Eurasian Plate is actually a fragment of the North American Plate called the Okhotsk microplate.) The March 11 temblor was preceded by several foreshocks, including a magnitude-7.2 event centred approximately 25 miles (40 km) away from the epicentre of the main quake. Hundreds of aftershocks, dozens of magnitude 6.0 or greater, followed in the hours and days after the main quake. The March 11 earthquake was the strongest to strike the region since the beginning of record keeping in the late 19th century, and it is considered to be one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded.

The sudden thrusting of the Pacific Plate, which has been slowly advancing under the Eurasian Plate near Japan, forced a portion of the seafloor upward by some 100 to 140 feet (30 to 40 metres), which displaced the water above the seafloor, spawning a and spawned a series of highly destructive tsunami waves. A wave measuring some 33 feet (10 metres) high inundated the coast and flooded parts of the city of Sendai, including its airport and the surrounding countryside. According to some reports, one wave penetrated some 6 miles (10 km) inland after causing the Natori River, which separates Sendai from the city of Natori to the south, to overflow. Damaging tsunami waves struck the coasts of Iwate prefecture, just north of Miyagi prefecture, and Fukushima, Ibaraki, and Chiba, the prefectures extending along the Pacific coast south of Miyagi.

The earthquake triggered tsunami warnings throughout the Pacific basin. The tsunami raced outward from the epicentre at speeds that approached about 500 miles (800 km) per hour. It generated waves 11 to 12 feet (3.3 to 3.6 metres) high along the coasts of Kauai and Hawaii in the Hawaiian Islands chain and 5-foot (1.5-metre) waves along the island of Shemya in the Aleutian Islands chain. Several hours later 9-foot (2.7-metre) tsunami waves struck the coasts of California and Oregon in North America.

Aftermath of the disaster

Casualties and property damage

Initial reports of casualties following the tsunami put the death toll in the hundreds, with hundreds more missing. Within days, that That number had increased dramatically in the following days as the extent of the devastation—especially in coastal areas—became known and rescue operations got underway. It was expected that the total number of deaths could be in the tens of thousandsunder way. Within two weeks of the disaster, the official count of deaths had exceeded 10,000; more than one and a half times that number were still listed as missing and presumed dead. By then it was evident that the earthquake and tsunami had produced one of the deadliest natural disasters in Japanese history, rivaling the major earthquake and tsunami that had occurred off the coast of Iwate prefecture in June 1896.

The bulk of those killed were believed to be victims of the tsunami waves. Coastal cities and towns as well as vast areas of farmland in the tsunami’s path were inundated by swirling waters that swept enormous quantities of houses, boats, cars, trucks, and other debris along with them. As the extent of the destruction became known, it became clear that how many thousands of people were missing—including, in some cases, half or more of a locality’s population. Among those who were unaccounted for were people on a ship that was washed away by the tsunami and passengers on several trains reported as missing in Iwate and Miyagi prefectures, including a Shinkansen (bullet) train traveling between Sendai and Ishinomaki.

Although much of the destruction was caused by the tsunami waves along Japan’s Pacific coastline, the earthquake was responsible for considerable damage over a wide area. Notable were fires in several cities, including a petrochemical plant in Sendai, a portion of the city of Kesennuma in Miyagi prefecture, northeast of Sendai, and an oil refinery at Ichihara in Chiba prefecture, near Tokyo. In Fukushimaprefecture there were reports of the destruction of hundreds of homes in Minami-Sōma city and a burst dam , Ibaraki, and Chiba prefectures thousands of homes were completely or partially destroyed by the temblor and aftershocks. Infrastructure also was heavily affected throughout eastern Tōhoku, as roads and rail lines were damaged, electric power was knocked out, and water and sewage systems were disrupted. In Fukushima a dam burst close to the prefectural capital of Fukushima city.

Northern Japan’s nuclear emergency

Of growing concern, following the main shock and the tsunami, was the status of several nuclear power stations in the Tōhoku region. Reactors at three plants closest to the quake’s epicentre were shut down automatically following the temblor, which also cut the main power to these those plants and their cooling systems. Subsequently , the tsunami damaged the backup generators at some of these those plants, notably at the Fukushima Daiichi (“Number One”) plant, situated along the Pacific coast in northeastern Fukushima prefecture about 60 miles (100 km) south of Sendai. With power gone, the cooling system failed in three of the four reactors within days of the disaster, and their cores subsequently overheated, leading , at times , to the release of some radiation.

Explosions resulting from the buildup of pressurized hydrogen gas occurred in the outer containment buildings enclosing reactors 1 and 3 on March 12 and March 14, respectively, but the inner containment structure around each reactor remained intact. Workers sought to cool and stabilize the three cores by pumping seawater and boric acid into them. Because of concerns over possible radiation exposure, Japanese officials established a 20-mile (30-km) no-fly zone around the facility, and an area of 12 miles (20 km) around the plant was evacuated.

A third explosion occurring occurred on March 15 in the building surrounding reactor 2 and was thought to have damaged the containment vessel housing the fuel rods. This led Japanese government officials to designate a wider zone, extending to a radius of 18 miles (30 km) around the facility, within which residents were asked to remain indoors. This development, along with a fire touched off by rising temperatures in spent fuel rods stored in reactor 4, led to the release of higher levels of radiation from the facility.

In the days that followed, workers at the facility made several attempts to cool the reactors using truck-mounted water cannons and water dropped from helicopters. Those efforts met with some success, which temporarily slowed the release of radiation; however, they were suspended several times after rising steam or smoke signaled an increased risk of radiation exposure. By March 22 temporary power lines had been connected to each of the plant’s six reactors in the hopes that electrical power used to drive the cooling systems of each reactor could be restored. Later the appearance of increased levels of radiation in some local food and water supplies prompted Japanese and international officials to issue warnings about their consumption.

Relief efforts

In the first hours after the earthquake, Japanese Prime Minister Kan Naoto moved to set up an emergency command centre in Tokyo, and a large number of rescue workers and some 100,000 members of the Japanese Self-Defense Force were rapidly mobilized to deal with the crisis. In addition, the Japanese government requested that U.S. military personnel stationed in the country be available to help in relief efforts, and a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier was dispatched to the area. Several countries, including Australia, China, India, New Zealand, South Korea, and the United States, sent search-and-rescue teams, and dozens of other countries and major international relief organizations such as the Red Cross and Red Crescent pledged financial and material support to Japan. In addition, a large number of private and nongovernmental organizations within Japan and worldwide soon established relief funds to aid victims and assist with rescue and recovery efforts.

The rescue work itself was hampered initially by the difficulty in getting personnel and supplies to the devastation zone. Once there, workers ; compounding the difficulty were periods of inclement weather that curtailed air operations. Workers in the disaster zones then faced widespread seas of destruction, in which : vast areas, or even whole towns and cities, had been washed away or covered by great piles of mud and debris. Although some people were rescued from the rubble in the first several days following the main shock and tsunami, most of the relief work involved the recovery of bodies, including hundreds that began washing ashore in several areas after having been swept out to sea.Several

In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, several hundred thousand people were in shelters, often with limited or negligible supplies of food or water, and tens of thousands more remained stranded and isolated in the worst-hit areas as rescuers worked to reach them. Within days the number of displaced people in the Fukushima area grew as the situation with the nuclear reactors on the coast deteriorated and people left the quarantined area. Gradually many people were able to leave the Tōhoku area for other parts of the country, but two weeks after the quake and tsunami some quarter million were still in hundreds of shelters in the region.

Related articles: affected areas

For coverage of some of the places affected by the earthquake and tsunami, see the following Britannica articles: